Fewer connected devices forecast in 2020

Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report contains a forecast of 26 billion connected devices by 2020, seemingly a big cut to its well-publicised previous vision of 50 billion in that timeframe.

The network vendor first outlined its vision for 50 billion connected devices in 2009, and has repeated the claim for more than five years as part of its Networked Society ideology.

Ericsson is now claiming the 50 billion number was a vision rather than a specific forecast, which it made before 4G was rolled out and smartphones had become ubiquitous.

Today, Ericsson says the industry is “well on the way to reaching the vision of 50 billion connected devices”.

No timeframe for that goal was mentioned in the report, but the company said that “50 billion connected devices is a good milestone that we believe will be reached sometime after 2020”.

Today’s market stands at around 13.5 billion, according to Ericsson, including (in order of size) mobile phones, PC/laptop/tablets/routers, connected consumer electronics, M2M, and fixed phones.

Ericsson was the first of the big network vendors to forecast huge growth in the connected device and Internet of Things space. Cisco also said there will be 50 billion “connected things” in the next five years, while Huawei forecast there will be 100 billion terminals interconnected by the Internet by 2025, as ICT becomes more embedded in everyday life and across all industries. 

Ericsson also forecast that 70 per cent of people globally will be using smartphones, and 90 per cent of the world will be covered by broadband networks, by 2020.

In the same year, it forecasts smartphone subscriptions will reach approximately 6.1 billion globally.